Barely Legal - 1962 Pontiac Super Duty

1962 Pontiac Super Duty brings strip performance to the street

Feature Article from Hemmings Muscle Machines

Let's start by dispelling a couple of myths associated with Pontiac Catalinas equipped with a Super Duty engine.
Myth No. 1: This is a car you can drive around in. It isn't. A Catalina with the Super Duty package was a factory-produced, street-legal drag racer sold at Pontiac dealerships.
Myth No. 2: The engine actually displaces 427 cubic inches. For unknown reasons, a small batch of engines were factory overbored .030, but the Super Duty engine is really a 421.
Myth No. 3: The 421 produces 405hp. It doesn't. Most estimates are in the 450hp range. In 1962 a Motor Trend road test of an identical car calculated that it was making 465hp at the crankshaft and 505-lbs.ft. of torque.
It is impossible to imagine a modern car being described by the factory as "particularly bothersome," "extremely unpleasant," "unsuitable" and "objectionable." On the other hand, this is exactly what the driver of a 406 Ford, a 413 Dodge or a 409 Impala, sent slinking home from the drag strip by a Super Duty Catalina in 1962, would have said. As prepared for drag racing, Catalinas with capable drivers ran 12.6- and 12.5-second quarter-miles at around 115 mph.
So how did all this come about? The story is as interesting as the cars themselves. A parallel can be made between the appointments of Semon Emil "Bunkie" Knudsen as general manager of Pontiac in 1956 and Lee Iacocca as general manager of Ford in 1960. Both were much younger than their predecessors, both modernized the cars for which they were responsible, and both were committed to performance. Knudsen himself ended up as president of Ford in 1968.
A number of hints of the upcoming Pontiac performance revolution emerged in the late 1950s. The most famous was the 389-cu.in. V-8, but the fact that Knudsen himself drove a Tri-Power Bonneville to a 131.747-mph lap record at Daytona in 1957 should have been incontrovertible evidence that there was a real "car guy" at the helm of Pontiac. Rochester mechanical fuel injection debuted in 1957 and made 300hp available in the Bonneville.
A Tri-Power option with three two-barrel carburetors became available across the Pontiac range for 1958 and raised horsepower of the 370-cu.in. V-8 to 330. Once again, Pontiacs would dominate at Daytona, recording speeds as high as 137.693 mph in the flying mile.
The styling stage for the later high-performance Pontiacs was set in 1959 with the arrival of Wide Track. Knudsen, taking the brand uptown and leaving the low end of the segment to Chevrolet, added 3.25 inches to the width of the body and then increased the track from 58.74 to 63.72 inches in the front and from 59.43 to 64 inches in the rear. The 1959s had heavier front brake drums, more accurate power steering and less dive-prone suspension, as well as an enlarged 389-cu.in. engine. At the same time, Knudsen was increasing Pontiac's participation in motor sports, with a successful stock car program and a new foray into drag racing with the help of the famed Mickey Thompson. Thompson also piloted the "Challenger I," packing a quartet of Pontiac 389-cu.in. V-8s, to 406.6 mph in a land-speed record attempt at the Bonneville salt flats in 1960.
Pontiac's success in stock car racing led them to branch out into drag racing in an effort to capture more of the West Coast market. It was these programs that resulted in the creation of the Super Duty packages for the Catalina. In 1961, Pontiac rolled out a lower, trimmer look and the company managed a podium sweep at the Daytona 500. (The winner, Marvin Panch, was driving the Pontiac Smokey Yunick campaigned in the 1960 race.) For 1962, a new roofline was introduced.
Perhaps alarmed by the success of cars prepared by Thompson, Yunick, the Royal Pontiac dealership team and others, the National Hot Rod Association enacted a rule stating that cars in the Super Stock class must be actual stock cars sold to the general public and manufactured on an assembly line in quantities of at least 50 per year. To continue their success on the quarter-mile, Pontiac had no choice but to create a 421 Super Duty engine for drag racing (as well as a 421 Super Duty designed for NASCAR). A lightweight aluminum front clip, as is found here on Bob Alling's Catalina, was available as part of the package with the Super Duty 421 engine. An aluminum radiator bracket was also available, and in 1963, eleven ultra-lightweight "Swiss Cheese" Catalinas with drilled frame rails would be created. Combined with a high-strength "Daytona" chassis designed for racing, the factory racer with its $1,200-plus engine option was as competitive as the "specially prepared" cars had been.
There is nothing that initially distinguishes this Super Duty from any other Catalina. The only external clues to the irrational power lurking under the hood are the finned aluminum eight-lug wheels, and you have to be paying attention to spot them.
Once you start the Super Duty Catalina it becomes completely clear that you are in the presence of a race car. With aluminum manifolds identical to those used on the NASCAR version, a set of noisy mechanical lifters and the pistons flailing around in their bores, the 421 produces a sound that has been compared to "being on the inside of a ship's hull while on the outside riveters pound ceaselessly away."
"I've taken off the factory closed exhaust and that's an experience," Alling said. "It has it's own unique Pontiac power sound."
From behind the wheel, however, all of that noise would just complement the sound of other cars fading into the distance behind you. These days, however, the Catalina doesn't see much drag strip action. In fact, Alling doesn't think that the car has been down the quarter-mile since 1962.
That Super Duty engine's unique sound is the result of an incredible list of internal modifications designed solely to withstand the abuse of drag racing. That "hot cam" sound is from a No. 10 McKellar with solid lifters. The block is stuffed with forged Mickey Thompson pistons with .009-.013-inches of skirt clearance and .030-.035 inches of clearance for two rods on a crank throw. The engine is fed by dual Carter 500cfm carburetors with manual chokes and straight mechanical throttle linkages. The 421's heads are equipped with 1.92-inch intake valves.
The rest of the engine is fortified with a heavy-duty high-pressure oil pump and eight-quart sump (usually filled with six quarts plus one in the filter for drag racing), high-speed propeller shaft, forged connecting rods, four-bolt main bearing caps and Moraine aluminum bearings. Exhaust gases exit through 1.66-inch valves into cast-iron headers with three-inch outlets, which in turn dump into the 2-1/4-inch cast-aluminum exhaust on one side, and a capped 3-inch outlet to the open air on the other.
A lightweight flywheel and heavy-duty clutch lend themselves to fast takeoffs. The remarkably smooth four-speed Hurst shifter is paired with a Campbell linkage and Borg-Warner T-10 transmission with close-ratio Corvette gears in a cast-iron maincase with an aluminum tail housing.
Inside, the look is elegant and tasteful, if not exactly muscular, with red accents over widespread chrome, a large-diameter horn-style steering wheel and wide cloth and leather seats. A closer inspection reveals a prominent floor shifter with a palm-filling white ball and "shifted by Hurst" badging. An 8,000-rpm Sun tachometer is the only gauge that suggests anything about the potency of the drivetrain.
Originally delivered to Boyerstown, Pennsylvania, this Catalina ended up sitting for many years in a collector's barn in Laughton, Oklahoma, before Pat McGroder bought it in 1982 or 1983 and brought it to Arizona. Alling bought the car directly from McGroder in 2001, after it had received a minor refurbishing in 1985, including a new coat of Mandalay Red paint. Aside from the paint and carpet, the car is otherwise original and sports only 19,000 miles. That may not sound like much, but to put it in perspective, that's 76,000 quarter-mile runs.
In the warm and congenial atmosphere of Phoenix, the Catalina fires up right away, with none of the trouble mentioned in the owner's manual. Alling's mechanic, Doug Hughes, mentions that with proper carburetor adjustment and engine tuning, "it really shouldn't be any harder to run than any other large-displacement, high-compression engine of the time."
Under way, it rides like what it is, a big car with lots of potential. Other than the car's racing history, Alling and Hughes essentially refuse to talk about anything other than straight-line performance: "I respect Paul Goldsmith and his ability to take it on a road course," Hughes said. "They were made to go straight."
But oh, what straight-line performance. The place to understand it properly is from just behind the Catalina at about 30 mph. When Alling steps on it, there's certainly that solid-lifter symphony from the engine to let you know that something serious is going on, but the car itself remains remarkably poised as it lifts slightly and puts that house-moving torque to the road. At low rpm, there always seems to be enough power to send you anywhere you want to go. Even with the stock Saf-T-Trak limited-slip rear differential, it's easy to break the Silvertown radials free in second gear.
As 100 mph can come up in a matter of seconds, it's worth noting that, as Alling said, "Getting them down is as much of a challenge as getting them up...It's not an easy driver."
But that was never the point. What Alling owns is not a muscle car, but a race car with a license plate on it. "It was built to go out on the track and beat the competition," he said. Over four decades after it rolled out of the factory doors, with a repaint and 19,000 miles on the odometer, the Super Duty equipped Catalina can still do just that.
Owner's View
Bob Alling's big Catalina takes him right back to a particular moment in time. "This was the hottest thing on the road when I was 16," he said. "It gives me an opportunity to experience the high-performance Pontiac power."
As the original owner of a 1969 Corvette, he has more than a passing acquaintance with muscle cars. But, "these were not muscle cars," Alling said. "A Chrysler 300 is a muscle car."
While the Super Duty Catalina doesn't run the quarter-mile any more, Bob does drive it on the street and he says that if were to pull up alongside an unsuspecting 5.0 Mustang, well, he "might run it out."
"It's pretty cool. It takes you back to 1962 and you're driving the fastest thing in the United States, in the world," Alling said. "You stand on it and it goes, big time."
PROS
+ Perfect for trips of approximately 1,320 feet
+ At low RPM, astonishing acceleration is always a toe away
+ Cushy ride of every other Catalina
CONS
- Utterly impractical for trips over 1,320 feet
- Astronomically expensive to purchase and operate
- Drag racing engine in a luxury car
Club Scene
Pontiac-Oakland Owners Club International
P.O. Box 9569
Bradenton, Florida 34206
941-750-4992www.poci.org
Dues: $31/year; Membership: 10,500
SPECIFICATIONS
Price
Base Price: $2,860.00Options on car profiled:
Dual four-barrel 465hp 421 Super Duty
Synchromesh engine
4-speed transmission
décor group
Saf-T-Track differential
Aluminum wheels
Drums & hubs
Wheel disc delete
Whitewall tires
Dual-speed wipers
Windshield washers
Custom foam front seat
Back-up lamps
All-weather anti-freeze
Engine
Type: OHV 90-degree V-8, forged-aluminum pistons, forged-steel rods and crankshaft
Displacement: 421 cubic inches
Bore x Stroke: 4.094 x 4.00 inches
Compression Ratio: 11.0:1
Horsepower @ rpm: 465 @ 5,300*
Torque @ rpm: 510-lbs.ft. @ 3,500*
Valvetrain: Mechanical, solid lifter, high-load valve springs
Main Bearings: 5
Fuel System: Dual Carter AFB 500cfm four-barrel carburetors, aluminum intake manifold, mechanical AC Delco high-pressure fuel pump
Ignition System: 12-volt coil, .3 ohm resistor block, dual-point Delco-Remy distributor
Lubrication System: Full-pressure, high-capacity sump, Meilings high-pressure positive displacement oil pump
Electrical System: 12-volt
Exhaust System: Dual cast-aluminum tri-y with cutouts, cast-iron headers, cast-aluminum manifolds
Transmission
Type: Borg-Warner T-10 4-speed all synchronized, Hurst floor shifter
Ratios: 1st 2.20:1
2nd: 1.66:1
3rd: 1.31:1
4th: 1.00:1
Reverse: 2.26:1
Differential
Type: Hypoid Saf-T-Track semi-floating
Ratio: 4.30:1
Steering
Type: Saginaw manual
Ratio: 29.1:1
Turns, lock-to-lock: 4.25
Turning circle: 42.8 feet
Brakes
Type: Hydraulic, manual drum
Front: 11 x 2.5 inches
Rear: 11 x 2.5 inches
Chassis & Body
Construction: Body-on-steel boxed perimeter frame, steel body with aluminum hood, front and rear bumpers and brackets, inner and outer fender skirts
Body Style: 2-door hardtop
Layout: Front engine, rear-wheel drive
Suspension
Front: Coil springs, upper and lower control arms, shock absorbers
Rear: Coil springs, control arm, shock absorbers
Wheels & Tires
Wheels: Aluminum disc, 8-bolts
Front: 14 x 6 inches
Rear: 14 x 6 inches
Tires: B.F.Goodrich Silvertown
Front: 14 x 8 inches
Rear: 14 x 8 inches
Weights & Measures
Wheelbase: 120 inches
Overall Length: 211.6 inches
Overall Width: 78.6 inches
Overall Height: 55.9 inches
Front Track: 62.5 inches
Rear Track: 62.5 inches
Shipping Weight: 3,730 pounds
Capacities
Crankcase: 8 quarts
Cooling System: 19.5 quarts
Fuel Tank: 25 gallons
Transmission: 2.5 pints
Rear Axle: 5.5 pints
Calculated Data
Bhp per c.i.d.: 1.086
Weight per bhp: 8.021 pounds
Weight per c.i.d.: 8.735 pounds
Production
1962 Catalina Super Duty Sports Coupe: 162
Performance*
0-60 mph: 5.4 seconds
1/4 mile ET: 13.9 seconds @ 107 mph
Top speed: 116 mph
*Motor Trend measured May 1962, est. weight for 1962 Pontiac Catalina Sports Coupe with standard front clip 4,070 pounds.

This article originally appeared in the August, 2005 issue of Hemmings Muscle Machines.